LOS ANGELES — The 64th Primetime Emmy awards began Sunday night by mimicking the 63rd, awarding statues to two stars of the ABC sitcom Modern Family, just like last year.

Julie Bowen, who plays Claire Dunphy on the beloved sitcom, won in the supporting actress in a comedy category, just as she did last year. And Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cameron Tucker, won for supporting actor, as he did two years ago.

The repetitiveness all but dared viewers to change the channel. But then the show took a sharp turn by presenting Emmy statues to a wide assortment of other series: a lead-actress award for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of the new HBO sitcom Veep; a lead-actor award for Jon Cryer of CBS’ Two and a Half Men.

The award for supporting actor in a drama went to Aaron Paul of AMC’s Breaking Bad; the supporting-actress award to Maggie Smith of PBS’ Downton Abbey; and the directing award for Tim Van Patten of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

The one series skipped in the procession was Mad Men, the lauded AMC series that received the Emmy for best drama four years in a row. Instead, it was a new rival, the Showtime thriller Homeland, that outmatched Mad Men in three major categories, beginning with writing. The award was shared by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff.

Homeland then won the award for lead actor in a drama, for Damian Lewis’ gripping portrayal of a war hero turned terrorist, and lead actress, for Claire Danes’ even more gripping portrayal of the bipolar CIA agent chasing him and sometimes sleeping with him.

Danes, who was the early favourite in the category, thanked the writers for “subverting our expectations in the most masterful way.”

The timing could not have been better for Homeland,since that show’s second season is set to begin in a week. A publicist for Showtime proudly noted that the network had never won before in any of the three categories.

Earlier in the evening, Bowen beat out one of her co-stars, Sofia Vergara, and Stonestreet beat three of his, Ed O’Neill, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and last year’s winner, Ty Burrell, reaffirming the show’s status as the sitcom to beat, having won the best comedy Emmy in 2010 and 2011.

One of the Modern Family executive producers, Steve Levitan, also won a directing award for the show.

The Emmy for outstanding writing went to the standup comedian Louis C.K., creator of the FX series Louie, in its third season. Louis C.K. was nominated for acting and writing last year, but this represented his first win in either category.

Less surprising was the selection of best reality series The Amazing Race, which won for the ninth year out of 10, or the selection of variety series (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) for the 10th time in a row.

The host of the evening, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, started the telecast briskly with a few jokes about television — “the only American product that the Chinese haven’t figured out how to make.”

He told the nominees, most of whom were sure to leave without a statue, “Tonight you will be asked to play your most challenging role yet — that of an actor happy about the success of another actor.”

Presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Emmys are the most prestigious prizes for television achievement in the United States. Winners are selected by the academy’s more than 15,000 members, a subset of whom vote in each category.

For decades the awards were a competition among the three broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC. But as the television landscape fractured, specialized cable channels started to move to the front and centre at the awards. Now they frequently outshine the networks.

This year, for the first time, none of the four networks that takes turns televising the awards (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) was nominated for an Emmy in the category of best drama series. Another broadcaster, PBS, did pick up a best-drama nomination for Downton Abbey. But the rest of the nominees came from HBO, AMC and Showtime, continuing a decade-long drift toward serialized cable dramas.